WSJ page one editor leaving for Reuters

Alix Freedman, the page one editor at The Wall Street Journal who has been with the paper for the past 27 years, is leaving for a job at Reuters.

She will be global editor for ethics and standards.

In an e-mail to the staff, Journal managing editor Robert Thomson writes, ” We all owe Alix a great debt for what she has contributed to the paper and the culture, and her impact and imprint will linger for many years. She will leave our shores at the end of next week, by which time her successor will be announced, so please seek her out and send her your personal best.”

Freedman had been a deputy managing editor at the paper before taking over page one earlier this year.

Freedman joined the Philadelphia bureau of the Journal as a reporter in June 1984. She moved to the New York bureau in 1987, covering the food and tobacco industry and was promoted to senior special writer in July 1991. From November 1979 to December 1982, Freedman worked as a news assistant for The New York Times. In January 1983, she become a staff reporter for BusinessWeek magazine.

In 1993, Freedman won a Gerald Loeb Award in the large newspaper category for her front-page article “Fire Power,” an examination of how a secretive Southern California family dominates the market for low-priced handguns frequently used in crimes. She was a 1994 Gerald Loeb finalist in the large newspaper category for her investigative article “Peddling Dreams,” which examined the economics of the rent-to-own industry and its effects on America’s poor.

In 1993, she and Journal reporter Laurie Cohen received the Front Page Award for specialized writing from the Newswomen’s Club of New York for their article, “Smoke and Mirrors: How Cigarette Makers Keep Health Question ‘Open’ Year After Year.” In 1996 she won a Pulitzer Prize in the national affairs category for her ongoing coverage of the tobacco industry.

Prior to assuming her current position in December 2005, she was an assistant managing editor, beginning in December 2004. Freedman was a senior editor from 2002 to 2004. Before that, she was the Journal’s investigative projects editor from 1999 to 2002.

Chris Roush is the Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.